


Nebula

by imorca



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 16:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12868506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imorca/pseuds/imorca
Summary: Latin for "cloud" or "fog." Interstellar. Diffuse astronomical object.~~~~~This is a different kind of fear: not sharp, not focused, not piercing nor slicing. It is made of the stuff of stardust, and the foundations of the universe.





	Nebula

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not exactly sure what this is going to be. I have this idea in my head to explore how it feels for Frank to start his after - that it might be a bit more poetic than expected given the oddly lyrical way he has when he becomes philosophical. And, that I imagine that he reads more than /Moby Dick/. Karen will be integral to it.
> 
> I'll warn you: I update when the spirit moves me.

_It's night, and the sky is impossibly clear. The entire Milky Way spins above him. The vastness enters on his inhaled breath. His tongue tingles with it, like the spicy effervescence of paprika, both sharp and heady. His lungs pull the stars and their planets deep. His blood whisks them out to the ends of his fingers and toes, circling back around and into his very heart. Even in the desert across the sea it is never so immediate, pressing into him, then through him, and out beyond him again._

He wakes the moment he first thinks that it can't be New York.

There is nothing but darkness around him. The secret magic of starlight doesn't penetrate his cramped room in the boarding house where he pays weekly rent for a shared toilet. Even with his eyes fully open, he can't adjust enough to make out the objects he knows are there: a shelf that serves as a makeshift desk, footlocker at the end of the bed that contains a bloody vest imprinted with his injuries, one duffle under the shrouded window full of clothes that he never unpacks, and the other duffle shaped like war under the bed.

He is shaken and uncertain. He hasn't dreamed without them for this entire year of his living death. It is a new kind of fear.


End file.
